


can it be this, the longed-for thing

by heylifeitsemily



Series: do android detectives dream of electric sheep? [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: And just a bit of banter here and there, F/M, First Meetings, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 06:56:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21231653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heylifeitsemily/pseuds/heylifeitsemily
Summary: Velma rescues Nick from a vault with only a few hiccups along the way.





	can it be this, the longed-for thing

Nick doesn’t get to finish his reverse-damsel-in-distress quip; he’s too busy catching his knight in vault-tech armor as her knees give out. All of her weight falls to him, hands preoccupied with clutching the pistol in her hands so tight she might warp the frame.

He helps her down onto the nearby crate. She’s shaking like a leaf on the wind, eyes darting between the inner workings of his neck, his eyes, and the blood spray on her forearm.

Nick crouches down in front of her slowly, and she puts up no resistance as he plucks each of her fingers from the gun, setting it down behind him. He leans back on his heels and takes stock of the room – he has to have it memorized down to the last speck of dust by now, but looking at his mug has not historically had success in calming folks down.

“You said we have three minutes ‘til they notice he’s gone, right?” Her voice is lower than he expected, rough like she’s coming down with a cold. “I’ll only need one.”

“Fair enough.” He turns back to her, and it’s a lifetime of detective work that has him cataloguing the details. Hair’s a dark brown, too dark for someone accustomed to midday treks under the sun, corroborated by the fading freckles across the bridge of her nose. Lips are painted a dark red, pulled thin as she rubs the blood on her hands onto her thighs. Brown eyes, bloodshot. The leather jacket over her vault suit is a few sizes too big, and there’s a knife strapped to her right thigh glinting under the fluorescent light.

It’s sixty seconds on the dot when she tears her gaze away from her lap to look at him. Vault suit’s definitely hers if her eyes are that wide taking him in.

“Sorry about that, detective.” She braces her hands on her knees as she stands, reaching down to pick up her gun. She checks that the safety’s on before holstering it. “I’m still not quite used to,” she trails off, the corner of her lip quirking up. “Getting my hands dirty.”

“Better than the alternative,” he says. Her eyes follow his metal hand as he lights himself a cigarette. “Seems like you’ve put yourself through a lot of trouble to cut me loose, though. There a reason you’re leading a one-woman rescue mission?”

She nods, seemingly to herself. “I need to find someone, and you come recommended. Though I can’t say having to save you from your current missing persons case is giving me a whole lot of faith.”

Her hand’s still twitching and her eyes are holding back a smile, so he lets that one slide. “I’m glad to help you if you need, but let’s save shoptalk ‘til we’re topside.”

“Right.” Her eyes stray to the door in a contemplative fashion before snapping back to him. There’s an urgency to it that sends his fans whirring. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

He might’ve coughed around his cigarette smoke, if he could. “I’m, uh, made of some pretty sturdy stuff. Hard to do lasting damage without a background in electrical engineering or some industrial grade wire cutters.”

She grimaces. “Didn’t stop them from trying?”

The worst of the damage is hidden underneath his trench coat, courtesy of a baseball bat to his pseudo-ribcage, but it’s probably a better idea to keep that to himself. What she doesn’t know might help her sleep at night.

“No, no. These guys don’t have the stomach for that kind of thing. My hand could use some oil” – he flexes his fingers to demonstrate the creak of metal sliding against metal – “but the only thing you could accuse them of is neglect.”

“And kidnapping.”

“And kidnapping,” he agrees. Could be the teasing, could be the way her hands were shaking round that pistol like it was a hot coal, but Nick’s gut says he can trust her at least so far as getting him out of this vault without putting a bullet in his back. He stomps out his cigarette and nods to her. “Ready to take this show on the road?”

She’s watching him with the telltale curiosity of someone who’s never seen a synth before, but it’s the concern underneath that’s making him feel exposed. “If you’re sure you’re alright to move.”

“You kidding me? I’ve been holed up here for weeks. You couldn’t get me to sit still if you tried.”

That draws a smile out of her, or at least as close as he’s managed. The furrow in her brow smooths for the first time since she walked in, but just as quickly it reasserts itself. She unholsters her pistol with a motion that isn’t fluid just yet, knuckles already going white.

“Lead the way, detective.”

“Nick’s fine.” He makes a left and starts heading down the stairs, and her steps are so quiet he’d have to look to see if she was following were it not for his air pressure sensors. He gives her the rundown under his breath as they make their way upwards, but it doesn’t seem to have done anything for her nerves by the time they reach the door.

He starts tinkering with the terminal, glancing at her in his periphery. “You handled yourself well enough to have gotten down here without backup.”

“Beginner’s luck,” she offers. Grip on that pistol isn’t relaxing even a bit, and an itchy trigger finger in there could prove as dangerous as the men waiting for them.

He strips the last wire, holding the two he needs about an inch apart. “What’s your name, kid?”

She cocks her head, like she’s unaccustomed to being asked. “Velma.”

“Velma.” Rolls off the tongue. “I don’t know what’s waiting on the other side of this door, but no one’s looking for a firefight, least of all me.”

“Is that meant to be comforting?” She’s almost smiling at him again, but there’s something shrewd behind those brown eyes of hers. They aren’t narrowed nor surveying; she's stopped dwelling on the patches of metal beneath the weave of his skin or the open wiring, now honing in on his eyes and staying put. Evaluating her intuition. There’s a familiar sort of honesty to it, a memory that isn’t quite his edging at the back of his mind.

Nick levels her with the most assuring look he can muster. “I’m not opening this door ‘til you say so.”

That seems to do the trick. After a moment, she breathes, blinks, and nods, something of an understanding finally settled upon. “Ready when you are.”

He brings the wires together. The door rises, and Nick’s met with Skinny Malone, a handful of henchmen, and a dame with a studded baseball bat. Not the best odds he’s ever faced, but not the worst by far.

Velma stands a little further back while he does the talking. They probably look like quite the pair, an outdated synth in a beaten up trenchcoat and a vault dweller looking as fresh as one of the old pin-ups, save the fatigue. Darla certainly seems to think so, gaze flitting between the two of them while she rolls the bat in her hands.

He’s almost getting through to Skinny when she lifts her chin towards Velma, eyes narrowed. “And what’s with the Vaultie, huh? You bring her here to finish us all off?”

He moves in front of her on instinct. “Now, my friend here was only – “

He’s cut off by Velma’s hand gripping at his forearm. It’s in a split second that he registers the panic in her eyes, and it's gone just as quickly, smoothed from her face as she holsters her pistol. She takes a step forward before he can think to stop her. At least Skinny and his goons are keeping their guns trained on him.

“Darla.” She nods to her. “My name’s Velma Pendleton. I’m here to bring Nick home, same as he was for you. Now, if you’d rather stay here, then by all means, we’ll walk down that tunnel and you’ll never have to hear from him again.” She tilts her head before taking another step closer, hands coming up to her head in something like a surrender. Nick’s servos whir as he fights the reflex to pull her back.

“Watch your step, lady,” Darla seethes, raising the bat.

How Velma got this far without any self-preservation instincts is beyond him; she takes another step forward, not yet within swinging range but not too far out.

“I wouldn’t feel right leaving without saying my piece, though. I don’t know the whole situation, but with what little I’ve got,” she gives the storage crates and metal walls a pointed once-over, “I can say for sure that there’s more for you out there. No one’s saying you have to head home, but do you really want to spend your life here, hiding in a rusting vault with a bunch of wannabe gangsters?”

Skinny’s gun is aimed at her now, his face getting the kind of red that usually precedes a misdemeanour, but Velma only has eyes for Darla. Nick thanks whatever powers that be that she stays put this time.

“It’s your choice,” she says, nice and even. “We don’t want to rob you of that.”

Nick’s running the logistics of taking Skinny out before he pulls that trigger, that Darla’s probably too smart to fall for the exploding-synth play, that if he takes a run at Skinny, he’ll move to shoot Nick out of reflex, that if Velma’s quick enough she can cut and run without catching a bullet –

And then Darla drops the bat. “What am I _doing_?”

Nick’s too busy taking in the ensuing lover’s quarrel to notice Velma back at his side until she pulls at his sleeve. Her hands are steady, but the monitor flashing at the corner of his vision says her pulse is going a mile a minute.

“’No one’s looking for a firefight’, huh?”

“I don’t see any bullets flying yet,” he intones. “Thanks in no small part to that silver tongue of yours.”

He’s cajoled another smile out of her, this one not so guarded and certainly a sight for his sore eyes. She shrugs, brushing a curl behind her ear.

“Gift of the gab, as my mother would say. Not often these days that I get the chance to put it to use.”

Darla picks up her baseball bat on her way out, the click of her heels only interrupted by Skinny grumbling under his breath. Nick’s able to talk his way out from there, and it isn’t long before they’re greeted with the Commonwealth sky.

Nick lights another cigarette as she leans against some rubble to catch her breath. The vault suit looks too pristine against the debris, and her Geiger counter begins to tick in agreement.

“Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“Well, give your secretary a raise for sending me out here and we’ll call it even.”

She’s sporting a newfound ease from where she sits, legs sprawled out in front of her and eyes catching the moonlight just so. That too-big leather jacket over her tiny frame is something right out of memory that doesn’t belong to him, but the grin he sends her way is all his own.

“About your missing person,” he starts. She tenses, but her expression turns to an unabashed hope that must mean he has his work cut out for him. “I want you to swing by my office and fill me in on the details as soon as you can.”

She jumps to her feet, brushing off dust to no effect. “It just so happens that I’m heading that way. Would you mind if I tag along and regale you with it on the walk back?”

He’s struck by how jarring she is, how untouched she looks against the backdrop of grime and decay. Even if the gentle teasing or the shoot-later, ask-questions-first approach did nothing to endear her to him, the sincerity coming off of her now would’ve sealed the deal.

The stairs to the fire escape overhead rattle with the wind, and something heavy clatters a few blocks behind them. He grinds his cigarette into the gravel under his foot. “It’s a long walk back to Diamond City.”

“Lucky for you, it’s a long story.”

Nick couldn’t stop himself from smiling if he wanted to.

**Author's Note:**

> title from "a home" by sarah c. woolsey.
> 
> I know this strays very little from how it plays out in the game but in my defense I needed to get this out of my system so i could start work on a presentation, Velma's a lot better with a pen then a gun, and also I love Nick, for which I have no defense


End file.
